The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tuesday

  • Tinubu’s promises

    Tinubu’s promises

    This writer has always been worried about the unfair distribution of national developmental assets across the regions, in our country, Nigeria. He has argued that if Nigeria is vertically sliced into two, the north-west, western side of the north-central and the south-west have more developmental assets than the other half, made up of the north-east, the eastern part of the north-central and south-east. Until the 1999 constitution provided for 13% derivation, which made Cross River and Akwa Ibom states economically prosperous, the eastern part of south-south was in the same boat as other easterners.

    This became glaringly so after the fall of the First Republic and the consequential civil war. There are variegated causative factors, but what is important is for the Federal Government, which has the bulk of resources and the power to determine where to allocate the national resources, to understand the need for balanced development of all parts of the country. As I have argued, what eventuated into the Boko Haram insurgency is substantially economics. With minimal infrastructure and industrialisation, the north-east quickly degenerated into insurgency as Lake Chad, which provided resources for food, agricultural activities and sustenance, receded.

    With poverty steering the youthful population in the face, they became more aware and more agitated over the failure of governance, and so more receptive of the doctrinaire solutions to the economic challenges. As the initially localised insurgency metamorphosed, the economic challenges exacerbated and got out of control. The little resources available are presently being used to fight an unwinnable war. Of course, as the consequences of poor governance spread farther, the infrastructure and industrial advantages in the north-west could no longer sustain their burgeoning youth population.

    And today, the banditry and criminal activity in that region seems to compete with the consequences of insurgency in the north-east. Similar or worse fate as happened in the north-east could have befallen the south-east, but for the sheer luck that her people are sojourners. Being an itinerant race, the full impact of the low level of infrastructure and industrialisation in the region has not been felt as much as it ought to. The agitation in the region is, of course, traceable partly to those challenges.

    So, the promises of gas, road and railway infrastructure, made by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) during his recent visit to Anambra State, where he was honoured with the title of ‘Dike si mba,’ if fulfilled, will help to address the yawning gaps that have fueled the separatist agitation in the south-east region.

    In a message signed by PBAT’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, titled: “In Anambra, President Tinubu pledges to tackle erosion, reactivate gas plant and integrate state into the national rail system,” the message of hope resounded.

    PBAT had promised to review the railway master plan to incorporate Anambra State. He said: “I am standing before you to say that the Ministry of Transportation is aware and will include the connection in the Master Plan and give it attention.” He also promised on completing roads linking Anambra to Kogi State, to facilitate easier access to Abuja, thus: “abandoned federal road projects that link Anambra to Kogi can then become the fastest gateway between Abuja and Anambra south and south-south. I agree.”

    PBAT made other promising promises. He said: “with our progressive ideological alliance, we will continue to partner with your state and to deliver shared prosperity in Anambra and to all Nigerians.” He went on: “as your President, I have always said and am saying the same now: In our national anthem, we sing, ‘Though tribes and tongues may differ in brotherhood, we stand.” Philosophically, he enthused: “We will continue to be brothers. We are one family, a single family, diverse, living in the same house called Nigeria. We are only staying in different rooms. Our diversity must lead to prosperity. We must work together to be a united Nigeria.”

    This writer cannot agree with the president any less. And the significance of the president’s visit to Anambra State, where the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in 2023, Peter Obi, hails from, cannot be lost. The president persistently referred to Governor Chukwuma Soludo as his friend, and the governor in turn reminded his people and, by extension, the south-east that the people are progressive, and his party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), is a progressive party, just like the party of the President, the All Progressives Congress (APC).

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    Governor Soludo, promised PBAT the support of his party, the APGA, and the people, in 2027, as is customary with the tradition of his party to support a ruling president seeking reelection. The governor intoned: “APGA is ideologically and strategically aligned with the centre.” He went on: “In Anambra, we are firmly and comfortably progressive. We are implementing bold, people-centric programmes, free education, healthcare for women, youth empowerment, and massive agricultural initiatives that align closely with the Renewed Hope Agenda.”

    He sang sweet tunes to the ears of PBAT: “For the sake of Nigeria and future generations, President Bola Tinubu must succeed. We are prepared to support him in every possible way, not just to succeed, but to excel.” This writer supports the strategic partnership of the government of Anambra State with the Federal Government, for the state to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. He has called for strategic partnership between political actors in the south-east and Tinubu’s progressive political family.

    The ideology of now or never is anathema in politics. There was yesterday, there is today, and there will be tomorrow. While the majority of those who voted during the presidential election in the south-east states rebuffed PBAT in 2023, the reality is that today, he is the president, with enormous constitutional powers to share and/or influence the distribution of national resources. It, therefore, makes strategic sense for the leaders of the region to engage with him to attract his favours to their people.

    Looking at the current political landscape, and then imagining what the future portends, especially the 2027 presidential election, there is the likelihood that PBAT would be returned as president. Governor Soludo has sensibly keyed into that by declaring that his party has adopted him as its candidate. If his strategy pays off, as this writer projects it will, then the people of the state and the south- east will be better for it. A strategic alliance in 2027 can bear fruit when the presidency returns to the south.

    This writer urges PBAT to right the historical injustices by keeping the promises he made in Anambra State, last week. As I have argued, no part of the country will enjoy its prosperity if the other parts are disproportionately disadvantaged. The rich will not sleep, when the majority are poor, hungry and wailing.

  • Adebanjo meets Awo

    Adebanjo meets Awo

    “E ku’le, Bami,” Pa Ayo Adebanjo went down, the full-stretch ‘idobale’ as the Yoruba do it, speaking his native Ijebu dialect.  He just arrived the heavens, celestial bliss, provocative peace and all.

    “Ayo!  Iwo reyen!” Awo enthused. “Welcome!  How’s Nigeria?  I hear Reuben (Fasoranti) just turned 99?  Loyal fellow!  Very reliable!  I rejoice with him.  Welcome!”

    Awo then bawled.  “Michael (Ajasin)!  Triple A (Abraham Aderibigbe Adesanya)!  Bola (Ige)! AMA (Adisa Meredith Akinloye)!  All of you, come out!  Ayo is here!”

    They all did.  Their collective “Welcome!” boomed and chimed like some heavenly symphony.

    “Ayo, you see,” Awo explained, “all your Afenifere folks are here.  Even AMA who coined ‘Afenifere’ during our sweet, early Action Group years, before he left us for the conservatives — or were they reactionaries?  They’re all anxious for news on Afenifere. I hope all is well?”

    “Bami, indeed all is well.  Afenifere is strong.  Afenifere is united,” Adebanjo enthused.

    “That’s good!  Very good!  But what’s this we hear about you, shortly before you left, being named ‘National Leader’ when the ‘Leader’ — Reuben — is still there?”

    “Ngbo Bola,” Awo turned to Ige before Adebanjo could respond. “Was there anything like ‘National Leader’ while you were there?”

    “No, my Leader,” Ige answered.  “It was the Leader, followed by the Deputy Leader, which I was before I was called here.”

    “Is that so, Triple A?”

    “Indeed!” Adesanya chipped in.  “I myself was Deputy to my Leader, Baba Ajasin. When Baba became ill and frail, I dutifully acted as Acting Leader. Baba Ajasin was Leader until he was called here.”

    “Is that right, my partner?” looking in the direction of Ajasin.

    Ajasin, always deep and taciturn, only nodded with a good-natured grunt.

    “So, Ayo,” Awo turned from Ajasin to Adebanjo, “what happened?  How come you became ‘National Leader’ when the Leader was still there.  By the way, were you not his Deputy?”

    “Yes, Bami.  I was.”

    “And he even made you Acting Leader, when he said, as I was told, that with old age he could no longer cope with the rigour and demand of the office?”

    “Yes, Bami,” Adebanjo nodded.

    But before he could answer further, Adesanya asked for permission to speak.  Awo gave him the go-ahead.

    “Please permit me, Baba.  Even that — Fasoranti appointing Adebanjo Acting Leader — was not unique.  I remember my own tenure as Leader.  We had suddenly lost Bola,” Adesanya went the historical lane, “in tragic circumstances.  He was my Deputy, and he never acted as anything beyond that, though the likes of Adebanjo also canvassed that we expel him, for nudging his zealous followers to form the rival Yoruba Council of Elders (YCE)”

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    “Was that so, Bola?”  Awo asked.

    Ige nodded, a tad crest-fallen. “But, my Leader …”

    Adesanya continued: “We never expelled him, though.  But in the midst of all that, he was despatched here!  We were all in great pains!  Great anguish, indeed!  So, we named another Deputy to succeed him — Fasoranti.  But later, I fell ill.  It was old age mixed with the rather draining efforts to keep Afenifere as one. During my very serious illness, however, Fasoranti served loyally as Acting Leader.  I hear that his loyalty paved the way for him to become Leader after me, just as my loyalty to Baba Ajasin made me succeed him as Leader.”

    “Very interesting!  Very good!” Awo quipped. “So, you’re saying, Triple A, that Acting Leader had become the Afenifere convention, long before Fasoranti named Adebanjo as one?”

    “Yes, indeed, Baba!”

    “And everyone, from you, had kept to that principle, without rupturing the ingrained protocol that Afenifere only has one valid, living Leader?”

    “Yes, indeed, Baba!” Adesanya concurred again.

    “So, Ayo,” Awo said, turning to Adebanjo, “how come this ‘National Leader’ thing?  Can you explain it?”

    “Bami,” — it was the combative, no-retreat-no-surrender, eye-blazing-with-passion-of-conviction Adebanjo that faced his Leader, in whose name, as life-long Awoist, he did whatever he did — “times were changing.  Too many opportunists were calling your name in vain.  Too many of them had infiltrated Afenifere to gain political office in your name.  Yet, they are not true Awoists!  I felt I had to act before it was too late!”

    “So, you’re saying Reuben is not a true Awoist?”

    “No, Bami.  I can’t say that — never!  But he had allowed, as Leader, too many suspect Awoists to take advantage of your name for political office.  Bami, I just had to act!”

    “Interesting!  Was that why you supported Peter Obi for President in 2023, against Bola Tinubu, who Reuben, your Leader, announced as the Afenifere choice?”

    “Partly, Bami!  But it was a bit more complicated.”

    “How, Ayo?” Awo queried. “Are you saying Obi is more Awoist than Tinubu?”

    “I can’t say that,” Adebanjo hee-hawed.  “I really can’t say that.  But Bami, Bola (I mean Tinubu) is only Awoist or progressive in name.  He’s more of a pragmatist, who uses progressivism or Awoism as veneer.  He does whatever works for him.”

    “I see!” Awo chuckled.  “But does he get results — I mean ‘progressives’ results? ‘Awoist’ results?”

    “Bami!  S’agbe loju yo yo ni! It’s all fake Awoism!  Fake progressivism!  Imagine tinsel passing as solid gold!”

    “I see!” Awo chortled again.  “Still, is Peter Obi more ‘progressive’ than Tinubu?”

    “It’s more complex than being progressive or not.  A fundamental core of Awoism is fairness to all.  The Igbo had not produced a president.  We had produced Obasanjo, the first elected president since 1999.  So, I thought another Yoruba man becoming President was grossly unfair.  That was why I backed Obi.”

    “Not because he was a better Awoist or progressive?”

    Loud quiet. But Ige stepped up to break it.

    “There he goes again!” He told Awo, gesturing Adebanjo, enveloped in his loud quiet. “It’s either his way or the highway!  The trouble Ayo gave Baba Adesanya!”

    “Let’s even leave all that,” Awo interjected. “Ayo, do you realize naming yourself ‘National Leader’ may have split Afenifere for real, this time, thus putting a dent on your Awoist reformation or revolution?  Even AMA, that left us for the reactionaries, doesn’t have the splitting of Afenifere to blight his name and foul his memory …”

    “Bami!” — Adebanjo was clearly agitated now — “I didn’t name myself ‘National Leader’!  We held a meeting!  We duly debated it! It was a thorough debate …!”

    But alas!  It was all a dream!  Ripples just woke up!  Goodness me!  It seemed all so real!

  • Beneficiaries of terrorism

    Beneficiaries of terrorism

    The lamentations of the governor of Benue State, Fr. Hyacinth Alia, and that of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang, must have reached the ears of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), who was recently in Katsina State on a state visit. The president had promised to reclaim the communities now occupied by terrorists, who invade and then occupy communities when they think the coast is clear. PBAT made the promise while addressing elders and leaders of Katsina State at a dinner held in his honour.

    While the forests of Katsina and other north-western states are in the throes of attacks and occupation by terrorists and armed bandits, their experience is slightly different from Benue and Plateau states. There, the nation is on war footing with the bandits who are holding up in the vast forests as the war rages on. The bandits remain legitimate targets to be neutralised, anytime they come in contact with our gallant soldiers, and they cannot under any guise become legitimate occupiers of the forests they are fighting from.

    But there is a difference from the situation in Benue and Plateau states, where after the attackers have wreaked havoc with their AK47 and AK49 rifles, the beneficiaries saunter in with their cows and packs, and sooner than later become legitimised occupiers. This writer urges the Federal Government to treat all those who are illegitimately occupying the communities of other people, whether as bandits, terrorists or armed herders, as the same. Those who are seeking to occupy, or are occupying communities, after their surrogates had done the fighting, should all be flushed out, for peace to reign.

    This writer was excited when PBAT promised to use technology to flush out these occupiers, who have turned Nigerians into internally displaced persons in their country. It is absurd that while the owners of the land are living as IDPs, herders are living in the abandoned communities, on the pretence that they are different from the invaders who chased the owners of the land away from their land. The latter-day beneficiaries may be the recruiters of the terrorists.

    PBAT was on point when, according to his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, he said: “investment is cowardly, and it will not go where there is banditry and terrorism.” I urge the affected governors to join hands with the president to deliver on the promise: “we will invest more in technology and take over the forests. Security is a national issue, not just at the local or regional levels. If we need investment in Nigeria, we must address insecurity.”

    The governors of Benue and Plateau must gird their loins, and stop lamenting like the biblical Rachael. The claim by Governor Alia that the invaders may have come from Mali does not disavow the fact that the beneficiaries are localised. Has the governor never heard of hired mercenaries? Governor Alia had said: “But these folks (the attackers) are coming in fully armed with AK-47s and 49s. They do not bear the Nigerian look. They don’t speak like we do. Even the Hausa they speak is one sort of Hausa.” He continued: “It’s not the normal Hausa we Nigerians speak. So it is with the Fulani they speak. There is a trend in the language they speak, and some of our people who understand what they speak give it names. They say they are Malians and different from our people. But they are not Nigerians—believe it.”

    While the governor may be correct in his analysis of the invaders who are terrorising Benue, clearly the local herdsmen benefit from the fallout of the attacks. In neighbouring Plateau State, Governor Caleb Mutfwang said of the terrorist attacks: “We have not less than 64 communities that have been displaced and their lands have been taken over by these terrorists.” And these shenanigans had been going on well before PBAT took over from former President Muhammadu Buhari. Without hesitation, those who are now on the land should be sent back to where they came from so that the owners of the land can return to their homes.

    Mutfwang described the modus operandi of the terrorists thus: “When people are dislocated from their villages and they have to run for shelter, now we are struggling to provide shelter for these people that have been displaced and dislocated from their communities.” He went on: “If they stay away from those communities for a sustained period of time, the terrorists would come in. As I am talking to you today, in Riyom Local Government Area, in Barikin Ladi Local Government Area, schools have been occupied by these terrorists for almost a number of years now.”

    It is strange that while the national army fights to displace the bandits and terrorists who have forcefully occupied the forests, those who have taken over the communities of our compatriots in the middle-belt states seem to be treated with kid gloves. They should be treated as accomplices to the mayhem and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by these terrorist invaders. The longer they are allowed to stay in the communities, the more complicated the situation becomes, and before long, the claim that they have become indigenous to the area will gain traction.

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    The nation cannot have peace if the same disease with the same symptoms is treated differently. PBAT should be encouraged by all well-meaning Nigerians, despite the distraction by political opponents, to hearken to the cry of Rev. Alia that his state is under siege. The governor said: “These terrorists are everywhere. We are under a siege. These people just come and hit and kill and run back. Where are they running to?” He provided an answer: “The terrorists have their own havens in Taraba, Nasarawa, and in border regions of Cameroon.”

    He said the attacks are well coordinated and the communities that share borders with Cameroon are very porous. Clearly, the nation’s army is getting more stretched. New frontiers of war are opening by the day. To further compound the challenges facing our country, and other poor nations, US President Donald Trump is doing every unreasonable thing within his power to precipitate another round of economic recession in the world, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expansionist agenda is stoking world economic distemper.

    If Nigeria’s political elite could come to their senses, they would join forces to stem rising terrorism across the country that can upend our democratic journey. Governor Mutfwang ironically captures the need for collaboration. He had said: “Under the last regime, the feeling among people in Plateau State, particularly the victims of these terrorist attacks, is that it looks as if the terrorists were given official government backing to be able to terrorise them because little or nothing was done to repel these attacks.” So, what about now?

  • Torpedo Atiku

    Torpedo Atiku

    Not a few have tagged the current PDP blowout and death-in-slow-motion as Hurricane BAT.  Maybe.  In politics, there is often no smoke without fire.

    But no one needs any smoke to see the clear fire Torpedo Atiku poses to the former federal ruling party.  Desperate for personal glory, Torpedo Atiku waits, with bated breath, to blast into smithereens, whatever remains of the unmourned PDP.

    It’s the umpteenth mirage of a presidential dream — abortive and aborted since 1993 — calling again, in 2027!  For that grand cloud-chasing, Atiku won’t blink an eyelid to further rip the storm-ravaged umbrella. 

    Which explains why the most excitable Atiku rabble, on X and FB, are already piping Atiku-Obi as a sure-bet new deal for 2027 — a certified failure beaten black-and-blue in 2019; a cross-failure that cleaned out each other, on mutual power greed, in 2023!

    Hey, it’s a democracy!  Folks are entitled to own democratic delusions!

    Still, Atiku and PDP fit each other pat — neither person nor corporate is capable of sober self-x-ray, talk less of galling home truths.  Which is why both would likely roil from crisis to crisis, until they mutually self-destroy.

    Nigerian politics would be much better for such. Anyone with Atiku’s crass insensitivity to a North-South political balance of 2023, yet seems willy-nilly set for a terrible encore in 2027, is well and truly beyond redemption.

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    The same goes for a party that, for 16 years, led Nigeria to perdition.  Now, it feels by weaponizing the current challenges it would, open sesame, charm its way through as a voter darling, in a national emergency.  More deluded than hitherto thought!

    But again, it’s the grim PDP tale that hardly ever changes: no thanks to its leaders — coarse and rough power dealers — that crudely over-reach themselves.

    As former President Olusegun Obasanjo worked tooth-and-nail to banish PDP into the power Siberia — with his raw and nasty power projections — former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, is working extra-time to be its undertaker-in-chief, with his insensate power manoeuvres.

    Even to the obtuse, it is clear that Atiku is the Alpha and Omega of PDP’s present bind — and terminal trauma.

    It was he that pushed northern solidarity — euphemism for Arewa  clannishness — to rubbish a North/South rotation understanding.  By that, he won the PDP presidential ticket.  But he also severed PDP from its traditional southern satellites since 1999.

    In that, he had a deputy wrecker-in-chief in Peter Obi who, with brilliant foxtrot in the cynical gaming of “Christian” votes and total mop-up of clannish Igbo votes, wiped out the PDP from much of the South East and South-South. 

    Yet, on the opportunistic platform of the Labour Party (LP), Obi ultimately laboured in vain.  It’s that tragically self-neutralizing, mutually destroying, ultra-selfish ticket of 2023, that empty dreamers are dusting up for 2027!

    But back to Torpedo Atiku, and his northern agenda for raw personal gains.  If a giddy northern — let-the-rest-of-the-country-go-to-blazes — agenda was not clear when wily Aminu Tambuwal, ex-Sokoto governor, stepped down for Atiku to clean out Nyesom Wike from the PDP ticket, the aftermaths left little doubt.

    Instead of throwing some fobs to placate the hurt PDP southern wing, by sacrificing Dr. Iyorchia Ayu as national chairman, Atiku decided to ride the storm, insisting that the Ayu issue would be addressed after he had been elected president!

    That was Atiku’s sweet dream.  But in harsh post-2023 defeat, Atiku has not only become flotsam, and Ayu jetsam, the PDP ship itself is battered by the storm!

    Now, aside the huge cost of Atiku’s hubris turned awry, what of the question of Wike as vice-presidential pick, and the resultant G-5 (the five PDP dissenting Governors) rebellion?

    Well, in fairness to Atiku, it’s only one stricken by political lunacy that would pick Wike as No. 2!  The ever-boisterous Wike is either No. 1 or nothing.  He has proved that with stellar performance as Rivers governor and FCT governor-like minister. 

    So, let no one blame Atiku for looking beyond Wike as No. 2.

    Still, how do the Greeks put it: those the gods want to destroy they first make mad?  As much as dropping Wike as No. 2 made eminent political sense, it fitted perfectly into the sundry comedy of errors that plagued the Atiku-Ifeanyi Okowa ticket — on which ex-Governor Okowa just shed penetrating light, after the Delta PDP sink into APC.

    Even after that, Atiku would unabashedly proceed to brand himself the “northern” candidate, who must vacuum-clean the vote of the “North”.  That, from the results, did not work out too well.

    Which makes it extremely rich that the unapologetic “northern” candidate of 2023 is now busy coupling a so-called pan-Nigeria coalition, if not dream merger of political forces, for 2027!  It’s a Teflon Atiku classic!

    What’s more?  The same Atiku thought so little about brandishing PDP as the core to gather that coalition and possible merger — the same PDP Atiku had scattered, with insensate power dream and greed? 

    And for nothing beyond a personal dash for 2027, for which he ruined the same party in 2023?  What presumptuousness! Talk again of Torpedo Atiku! Little wonder, the PDP governors gave him the cold shoulder! 

    It’s clear PDP is considerably more weakened, no thanks to Atiku’s soulless gambits.  That’s driving a fresh elite power pacting en route to 2027, the most spectacular of which has been the Delta PDP meltdown, which might yet repeat itself in Akwa Ibom, and maybe shake up LP in Abia — who knows, given the frank, though double-speak, interview Governor Alex Otti just granted Arise TV?

    Now, with all of these excitements, is President Bola Tinubu’s re-election a done deal, even with the president not attaining mid-term until May 29?  Hardly!

    Yes, the elite re-pacting would greatly reshape the election-time dynamics in 2027, radically away from what obtained in 2023. So, those busy misguiding themselves, and thrusting Atiku-Obi, based on 2023 election stats, know they only blow hot gas.

    Yet, the Tinubu government would have to account for its tough policies. 

    Indeed, Governor Tinubu of Lagos (1999-2007), that charmed everyone with his “pragmatic democratic welfarism” (to borrow a Tatalo Alamu coinage) — and started the payment of students’ WAEC fees, later copied and mainstreamed by other states, across party lines — has returned as President Tinubu with hard (many would insist: harsh) neo-liberal policies!

    Sign of the tough times that need equally tough remedies?  Maybe — and in fairness, the stats from the economic front tend to show the patient is “responding to treatment” to borrow that medical cliche.

    Yet, to the masses, it hasn’t quite trickled down — which is why the Atikus, the Obis, the el-Rufais etc, of this polity, would weaponize current anguish and position selves as emergency saviours.  They are not.

    But it’s the president’s heavy cross to either explain the delayed trickle-down — and good luck on that, with empty pockets and rumbling tummies! — or ensure the trickle-down bursts into a manna-like torrent to sate the hungry and tame the angry!

    As for the PDP slow death, blame Torpedo Atiku, and less Hurricane BAT!

  • Atiku’s train allegory

    Atiku’s train allegory

    When serving governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), met in Ibadan, Oyo State capital, some days ago, and declared that the erstwhile behemoth would not join her immediate past presidential candidate, Atiku Abubabkar, on his journey to the wonderland, by way of merger or coalition with lesser parties, Atiku’s train allegory, in reply, caught my attention. I recalled with nostalgia, the story of my town’s man, one Uncle Felix, who used to wow our kinsmen, about his contribution to the running of train, in Enugu.

    Atiku had written on his X (twitter), “Indeed, the coalition train has left the station and would have multiple stops to bring on board Nigerians of all shades.” The former vice president was reacting to the communique by the chairman of the PDP Governors Forum and governor of Bauchi State, Bala Mohammed, who said: “Noting the nationwide speculations about possible merger of political parties, groups and/or association, the forum resolved that the PDP will not join any coalition or merger.”

    Not easily given to surrender, even when the stakes are stacked against him, Atiku bayed that his pet project is a Nigerian project and will go ahead with or without the governors. Like my kinsman Felix, driving the train on community work days, was always the reason he never participated in community service. In those days, maintaining the roads, drainages and bridges were done by direct labour, and every able bodied man living in the village, and the nearby Enugu town, must return for the manual labour. 

    My Amofia village men, usually hold their meeting on uka orie. At such meetings, the days for the community work will be agreed and every member that fall within the workgroup assigned to execute the project, would be expected to return on the Friday, preceding the Saturday, earmarked for the community service. The willy Felix, who was a mere fireman or stoker, would not return, and when the men meet subsequently at the village hall, he would say that he couldn’t return, because he was assigned to drive the train during that weekend.

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    A few, who knew that Felix was lying himself out of the hard work of community service would keep their peace while the ignorant majority elevated him to a bogeyman for lesser mortals. He was respected and feared, and while growing up, he became a sort of legend for the movement of trains. So, when Atiku threatened that his train had left the station with or without the governors of his party, I saw a Felix, lying himself out of the difficult task of building a coalition.

    I asked myself, whether, like my relation Felix, Atiku had been overrated as a political titan? Looking back at his trajectory in political contestation, Atiku has never been the driver of any political movement that succeeded. During his years in PDM, Atiku was under the apron of late Shehu Yar’Adua, the driver. He was merely a fireman, whom circumstance nearly elevated to a driver, when Ibrahim Babangida banned the driver of the movement, Yar’Adua.

    And even when Chief Moshood Abiola became the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), in 1993, he was overlooked for Babagana Kingibe. Again, in the 1999 general elections, Atiku had contested and won the governorship of Adamawa State before Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in honour of Yar’Adua, copulated him to the presidential ticket. Instead of rising to become the driver of the movement, he got himself entangled with Obasanjo, who literally threw him under the train.

    Ever since the debacle of a tainted public servant as portrayed by Obasanjo in his book, Atiku, has failed in every presidential race he participated in. Under the banner of the Action Congress (AC), he was a fireman, while Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the driver. When he returned to the PDP, he couldn’t hold his own and was lured back to All Progressive Congress (APC), where he was given a bloody nose in the party primary by former President Muhammadu Buhari.

    Seeing that the road was closed for him in APC, he returned to the PDP and despite gaining control of the steering, he could not drive the train to the destination in 2023, as some of his firemen refused to shovel in coal, to fire the engine. Five of the governors led by Nyesom Wike, then of Rivers State, were stoking the fire with wet wood. The smoky train didn’t get to the finishing line, until the incumbent President Tinubu, took the diadem.

    Instead of going into a dignified retirement, Atiku is steering his community that he has learnt new tricks that would enable him win the next presidential race. But even before the contest is declared, those who should be his firemen are saying that he has no capacity to mount the wagon again. While he is talking about a coalition with other parties, to gain the strength to contend with Tinubu, the entire governors of his party – the PDP, 11 of them, have said that they will not surrender their train to a man with dimmed eyesight.

    They must have asked themselves, if Atiku could not defeat Tinubu, when both of them contested as outsiders, how can he do so, when Tinubu has the benefits of incumbency? To further compound Atiku’s challenges, some of his important firemen have carried their coal to his opponent. While the governor of Akwa Ibom, Umo Eno, has publicly declared that he would support President Tinubu in the 2027 presidential election, the governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori, also of PDP, has decamped with all elected political office holders, all appointed and all elected party officials, to the APC. 

    Even more worrisome for Atiku and his sidekick, the former governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El Rufai, members of the SDP, which has been advertised as a backup wagon for Atiku, to ride to victory, should PDP train leave without him, have ominously warned that their coach is not available to be hijacked, by angry men for dastardly acts. According to the Forum of Social Democratic Party chairmen, those coming to their party must not seek to hijack the party or attempt to change its leadership. A political pundit has even claimed that Tinubu owns the new coach, Atiku wants to drive.

    Clearly, the past few weeks have caused seismic tremor on the rail track of the coalition train which the loquacious El Rufai, has boasted would outrun President Tinubu’s train in the 2027 presidential election. This column doubts whether Atiku and Nasir El-Rufai have the skill to cobble a coalition with the discordant tunes emanating from their conclave. The way things are looking up, any contraption which Atiku puts on the track will likely derail. So far, President Tinubu’s political train is sturdier that that of Atiku.

  • Insufferable!

    Insufferable!

    Each time serious political discourse brews, cynics and extremists, North and South, East and West, mount a booming concert of political lunacy: barking mutual threats, belching mutual fires.

    So, after much din, far less is done — except a polity already quaking with great unease, is sent roiling with a heightened fear of threatened Armageddon!

    With such rows, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed’s arrogant posturing over the North and the rest of Nigeria, en route to the 2027 electoral sweepstakes, must take the cake.

    Swallowed by conceit, battered by hubris, Baba-Ahmed claimed that in six months, the “North” would take its stand on 2027; and the rest of Nigeria would have to decide whether they wanted to follow or not.  What insufferable arrogance!

    Now, arch-Snooper Tatalo Alamu, “Snooping Around”, in The Nation Sunday (April 27), did quite a number on Dr. Baba-Ahmed.

    Tatalo suggested Baba-Ahmed was a technocrat at the ready for sinecures, many of them opportunistic, which might have helped to under-develop the North — this same “North” — over which he now postures, as emergency champion.

    He traced back Baba-Ahmed’s days as the secretary to the best-forgotten Maurice Iwu INEC, which cooked the blood-curdling heist that was the 2007 election, which nevertheless signalled the beginning of the end for the now crumbling PDP.

    He fingered the rank opportunism of Baba-Ahmed joining the Bola Tinubu Presidency. Not only was he no APC partisan, he raised no finger when his brother Datti, a sore loser as Peter Obi’s running mate, mouthed near-treasonable nonsense to de-market Tinubu’s win. 

    Which makes it very rich — indeed, morally disgusting — for Baba-Ahmed to jump off that same government and start attacking it, on behalf of his phantom “North”!

    But not even Snooper captured Baba-Ahmed’s activism in the Northern Elders Forum (NEF).  The arch-conservative NEF plays catch-up to the  Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) as the authentic voice of the North.

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    But NEF — at least to the perceptive — comes with an additional baggage: Prof. Ango Abdullahi, the soul of its activism, never hides his PDP sympathies, though he’s unfazed in his northern nativism, which is no crime in a federation, where different ethnics compete for power and influence.

    Still, Abdullahi’s partisan bent has made not a few to wonder if NEF activism is no more than closet PDP campaigns, carefully hidden behind rogue northern supremacism. 

    Indeed, while the bully southern media were blighting President Muhammadu Buhari — just because they could — on alleged northern nativism of the crudest hue, Baba-Ahmed and his NEF kept a loud silence — the voice of NEF, the hand of PDP?

    Yet, in Nigerian history, PMB was the first honest northerner to gain elective power on own terms.  While his fellow northern elites had thoroughly compromised selves, it was Mai Gaskiya (the Honest One) that the northern Talakawas could trust with power, backed, of course, by the Tinubu South West political army.

    He made his own mistakes, no doubt.  But if President Olusegun Obasanjo had been half as committed as PMB was to his job — less to personal imperial glory — the collapse and mess of 2015 would have been averted.

    But even from that Jonathanian collapse of 2015, a logical follow-up to Obasanjo’s mirage from 1999-2007, PMB made solid marks which though largely unsung by a bias-smitten, hypocritical media, can’t be denied by any fair-minded soul.

    Which brings these troubling questions: can any northerner honestly flaunt the North as it stands — a developmental laggard — as Baba-Ahmed just did, with all his pious pomposity?

    Or was it just bluff-and-bluster that his lobby could always ghost the Arewa plebs to vote according to cynical whims, by a manipulative elite?

    By the way, which “North” are these blokes even yammering about?  Baba-Ahmed’s native North West, which has bathed in the sweet sun rays of power more than any other region, yet grills in mass poverty, only next to the North East?

    The North East, as filthy poor as the famed wealth of one of its illustrious sons, Atiku Abubakar; and plunged into the existential crisis of Boko Haram terrorism, a logical extension of mass poverty and unfazed ignorance that criminalizes knowledge?

    Or the long-suffering North Central, now and then, wracked with senseless killings, which root causes these glamorous champions of the “North” have not figured out?  Or if they have, wilfully condoned, as not a few allege, for narrow ethnic reasons?

    Maybe, Baba-Ahmed’s “North” is indeed the North West?  Its thunderous voting bloc, when pacted with the South West’s, could on paper deliver the Presidency, as it did for PMB and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), both APC presidents.

    Even so, what hold do Baba-Ahmed and his kind have on the North West, beyond over-projected influence as media paper tigers?

    Now, if they are no PMB — in or out of power, he retains the Talakawa trust — how can they walk their talk that when they snap their fingers, the northern masses jump?

    O, did that explain the scramble by Atiku and the mercurial Nasir el-Rufai, to add PMB to their coalition bluff?  Atiku, of course, knows too well PMB and fickleness are two parallel lines.  They never meet.

    As for El-Rufai, he’s as razor-sharp as they come in intellect.  But alas!  A stunted emotional intelligence almost, always lets him down. That was why he felt he could sell a PMB/wholesale CPC anti-APC coalition dummy. PMB poured cold water on such.

    Besides, wasn’t the hubris of the North as Nigeria’s insufferable power Leviathan, the type Baba-Ahmed painted, dead and buried with the June 12 debacle, after which IBB burnt his fingers, and the rapacious Sani Abacha lost his life?

    Still, let no one assume only the North is guilty of political arrogance.  As the northern elite often weaponize their voting numbers to game some concessions, the southern elite too wield their powerful media to browbeat any northern order.  But it’s mutual hypocrisy that always back-fires.

    Under PMB, the South, and bullying media in tow, thundered “nepotism” and screamed “Fulanization”.  These same southern hypocrites — among them top columnists, with dashing, cutting brilliance but little gumption, now rally to defend PBAT’s alleged “Yorubanization” of offices!

    Yet, neither did — or is doing — any wrong, beyond the media’s galloping bias — and Ripples is proud to say he slammed those idiotic campaigns back then — and thus can stand by PBAT now!

    Pray, how can putting folks you trust, to deliver on your policies and programmes, equate “nepotism”, “Fulanization” or “Yorubanization” — even if the uppity South tarred PMB as some cave nativist from Daura; and PBAT, the “city boy” from Lagos, so cosmopolitan he would import, from Mars, those who would work for him!

    Enough of this sterile politics of mutual blackmail!  What we need is the rich politics of mutual development. 

    As for Baba-Ahmed and co, they labour under the delusion of pre-June 12 Nigeria. That era is gone — and forever buried.

  • It’s stunted parties, stupid!

    It’s stunted parties, stupid!

    Many felt it was reasonable compromise.  Others slammed it as reckless overreach — that April 14 decision, by the PDP Governors Forum, to sideline previous claimants to the PDP national secretaryship and impose a fresh one, even in an acting capacity.

    But again, this storm is only the symptom.  The real disease is 26 years on — on May 29 — since the return of democracy, the government could have bloomed.  But the party system is the reverse: it has wilted.

    Politics on frail parties is not unlike erecting a mansion on a very weak foundation.  It bodes ill: a doughty political party system is the bastion of participatory democracy.

    It’s looking even more dreary now — even if that may be the hard crash before the bounce — that the courts are throwing the issue back to our infantile party players: go sort out your internal troubles, you’re adults!  Leave the courts out of it!

    But instead of getting chaste and wise, at least two parties have descended into even more chaos.

    The Labour Party (LP) — opportunistic footstool of ace cynical populist Peter Obi — is effectively carved into three:

    The Julius Abure pack, which like Samuel Ladoke Akintola of 1st Republic Action Group (AG) has just “taku” — going nowhere; 

    The patrician wing that set up Esther Nenadi Usman as caretaker chair, hoping the majesty of its sole governor, Abia’s Alex Otti, with the promise of his office’s likely funnel of endless cash, would wow the other belligerents;

    And the Lamidi Apapa plebeian wing, giving the other claimants a ferocious push for their money, to claim LP’s troubled soul!

    But wait a minute: it could well be four! 

    The paternalistic Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), under the chaos-hugging Joe Ajaero, whose standard reflex is to unleash his Aluta army, even if they boast no winning tactics, talk less of enduring strategies! 

    There’s more to battles than running into them like headless chickens!  Hell is loosed upon the Labour paradise!

    You want a gripping study in buzzing chaos?  Take a ringside seat in LP’s current unravelling!  Perhaps that would teach the party — if it survives this present meltdown — not ever again to sell its platform (and ideological soul) for dirty election-eve lucre!

    Now, to the PDP.  Not a few have wagered that current PDP troubles are fitting karmic comeuppance for its past flagrant party abuses.  That’s dead-on-the-money correct — and no tears from here!

    PDP’s trouble started when empire-minded President Olusegun Obasanjo felt the late Solomon Lar might just have had too much gravitas for his comfort.  He would rather appoint fawning viceroys — what the Yoruba call ajele — to do his bidding as all-mighty elected president, that just towered above the platform that hoisted him for office.

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    Otherwise, he would not have inspired Ahmadu Ali to order elected Governor Rashidi Ladoja to bow before the late Lamidi Adedibu, illicit security vote gravy craving and all! The Alaafin Molete, unfazed emperor of amala-and-abula politics was Obasanjo’s Oyo PDP garrison commander!  It all ended in tears!

    So, from one weakened viceroy to another, PDP crawled into power wilderness!

    Now, with Atiku Abubakar and his Samson’s complex — ready to crash everything on everyone, with his diseased obsession to be president despite chilling realities — PDP is in for a long, long night. 

    As the 1st Republic federal ruling coalition — the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) and the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC) — put their worst foot forward after Nigeria’s independence, so did PDP, at the advent of this 4th Republic in 1999.

    And this uncanny parallel, too: as those least upbeat about independence corralled the cream of state from 1 October 1960, arch-plotters against the June 12 mandate of Basorun MKO Abiola grabbed the prime plum of state from 29 May 1999.

    Obasanjo himself, first 4th Republic elected president, counted among this wild breed.

    But back to PDP’s present troubles.  The PDP Governors meeting at Ibadan, Oyo State, of April 14, was probably well-intentioned. 

    The Supreme Court just created a further puzzle: embattled Samuel Anyanwu claimed it just validated his case.  Wannabe Sunday Ude-Okoye couldn’t swear he hadn’t run into a storm.  Neither could he crow he had a clear path to the cherished cake.

    What to do?  The PDP governors, in their wisdom — or arch-folly? — decided to shove both aside, as newly self-imposed Atlases, whose combined, rippling muscles should pacify everyone else — good try!

    But not so fast, Anyanwu balked. Beyond illicit self-projection, where did the governors derive their powers ? 

    Did they even remember that without the party secretary — the Leviathan that signed  signed their forms — they wouldn’t even become candidates, talk less of governors?

    So, why this newfound muscle-flexing, to decree the PDP national secretary, knowing they had earlier backed Ude-Okoye but fell flat on their faces?  Intrigue without end!

    Now, Anyanwu vs Ude-Okoye is done and dusted.  Looming is Anyanwu vs Setonji Koshoedo, the legit deputy national secretary and the governors’ new beloved.

    Post-Easter confusion looms on the PDP front!

    But where would it all end?  If you “checked out the real situation” as the immortal Bob Marley did, in one of his global hits, would it be as he predicted: “total destruction is the only solution”?  It’s Easter!  Let the PDP carry its own cross!

    Still, let no one think the ruling APC is sitting pretty.  Well, national chair, Abdullahi Adamu, even flush with hard-won victory in 2023, knew his goose was cooked.

    He was caught up in the ugly intra-APC sweepstakes, that nevertheless produced Bola Tinubu as candidate, not his preferred Ahmad Lawan, falsely rumoured as President Muhammadu Buhari’s choice, before PMB quelled the rumour.  It was payback time.

    Now, should Adamu have voluntarily fallen on own sworn?  Or was there a bit of Obasanjo in new President Tinubu who wasted no time to get rid of him?

    But replacing a national chair from North Central with one from North West has caused — and is still causing — some ripples in the party.  The logic — balancing.

    The likes of Salihu Lookman and Nasir el-Rufai have used that as excuse to storm out of the party, baying for some anti-APC coalition or another for 2027.

    But even el-Rufai’s body language — his presumption that he would join the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and pronto, re-make it in his own image, to fight his own battles — speaks volume about politicians’ general contempt for the party, even if it’s their only viable vehicle to power.

    For Nigerian democracy to thrive, there must be conscious and deliberate efforts to build the party system.  There are no two ways about it.

  • Duplicity by another name

    Duplicity by another name

    Nigerians must consider themselves ‘indebted’ to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), first, for giving new meanings to the once-familiar concepts of ‘principles’, ‘morality’, ‘law’ and ‘constitutionalism’, and second, for insisting on operationalising them in their new, but self-assigned opposition role in the ongoing Rivers fracas.

    Thanks to the august body, the string of absurdities which started with the torching of the parliament building, the banishing of 27 in a parliament of 32 members into the proverbial Siberia and their subsequent replacement with three members, the running of the business of government without a duly passed appropriation law and other heinous constitutional infractions are supposed to count for nothing.

    Even less – in their view – is the unambiguous, declarative judgment of the highest court dubbing the Fubara-led contraption in Rivers State – and that is what it is – as the height of despotism. 

    In the eyes of the Afam Osigwe-led NBA, those fundamental infractions should still be deemed as tolerable and that is even long after the Supreme Court had pronounced on the death of law and constitutionalism in the aftermath of Governor Sim Fubara’s coup in the state!

    Wouldn’t that amount to defecating in the communal pond – in a moment of opportunistic exigency?

    Imagine, we are supposed to be dealing with a grave matter – the subversion of those fundamental tenets of democracy; one whose terrible derivative, was the treatment of the legislature branch as expendables! It is certainly a new day that the NBA has since deemed them as tolerable – including the open call for anarchy by the dictator!

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    Could the strident defence of those absurdities have also counted for the defence of principles and constitutionalism in the books of the NBA?

    Even with the above background, the tragedy is that the NBA continues to push the specious narrative that the problem in Rivers State actually started on March 18 when the state of emergency was declared by President Bola Tinubu. Ever since, the body has somewhat assumed the role of the judge in all things right and wrong. Finally, Nigerians are beginning to know why! And that is far from ennobling!

    Little wonder the NBA has pronounced the president wrong to have staved off the looming anarchy; wrong to have directed the combatants to take time to rest in the event that truce was nowhere on the horizon; and wrong with his appointment of a sole administrator to take charge to allow things to cool down. And then the National Assembly for approving the declaration as the law required.

    Talk of a body traditionally sworn to the defence of the rule of law and constitutionalism, finally revealed as having a dog in a most unnecessary fight!

    And the result? Muck everywhere. And so the predictable verdict by the same NBAS – the once-famed Garden City is no longer place to do business. Why? Because the government halted the spiral of impunity by a benevolent despot who once declared that the parliament can only exist to the extent that he allows it!

    In their sponsored anomie, we are supposed to be torn between the Supreme Court-declared constitutional aberration and the National Assembly-approved administrator temporarily holding the reins of government in the Garden City! Well, they, the NBA and their allies could not be more wrong!

    Yes, we grant our ‘principled’ NBA the right to its persuasion that living under the former’s jungle rule characterised by impunity would have been more dignifying than the mere thought of staging the high-octane event under the latter brought in to preserve peace and order. Only that we must give thanks that body does not have the last word!

    To be sure, no one is contesting the body’s freedom to take their AGC to Enugu or wherever! It is entirely their business. They also free to glorify their stance as a ‘principled stand against the unconstitutional governance of Rivers State’. Or even still, their insistence that continuing with the AGC in Port Harcourt would have amounted to “a tacit endorsement of constitutional violations and subversion of the rule of law.” And finally the declaration that the NBA “could not, in good conscience, hold its flagship event in a state governed unconstitutionally. These are entirely the body’s prerogatives.

    Except that in the exercise of their discretions, the body not only chose to lapse into an unforgivable amnesia, they forgot one little matter that was just as important to Nigerians and to the good people of Rivers State – the N300 million paid by the suspended governor to the NBA to host the event. The revelation obviously sheds some light into the dynamics at play as indeed the motivations behind them.

    For now, the issue is that the state has been denied the hosting rights to the event and the good people of the state of its potentially accruable benefits. And so the administration in the state wants the money back.

    That should ordinarily be fair or if you like – just, if you ask me!

    On its part, the NBA says that the state should not only perish the thought, but also that nothing of the sort is being contemplated – a case of double whammy. It says the fund was “a gift” to the association for its 2025 Annual General Conference, not tied to any hosting rights. It claims the NBA usually seeks support from organisations, government agencies and state governments due to the “enormous cost” involved in hosting the conference.

    While those may well be, still, they do not vitiate the issues of principle, of law and of due process. Here, it ought to be strange that the NBA would choose not be bothered that the fund could not have been lawfully appropriated by the three-man parliament that the donor (or is it their client) opted to work with.

    Even more deplorable is the very idea of holding on to what appears to be an unlawful item when the demand was made. For while the NBA might feel entitled to whatever pretences it deems fit to project, to most discerning Nigerians, that stance could only be a measure of the ingrained pathology of impunity that has led the state as indeed our beloved country to this sorry pass. Trust Nigerians to recognise duplicity when it manifests. The latter would seem one which no puerile legalism would wash.

    For now, Nigerians have to wait for the courts to determine who, between the NBA and the Rivers people, is right or wrong.

    Talk of the strange times we are in.

  • Resurgence of killings

    Resurgence of killings

    The perennial killings in Plateau and Benue states over the years seem to have resurged. The killings, associated with herdsmen, allegedly seeking to conquer victims and their pastured lands, many thought, had petered. But from recent incidents, the murderers were lurking around, waiting for an opportune time. Again, on the eastern flank, the Boko Haram resurged their terrorist acts in Borno State, while Lakurawa, the new terrorist group, which we thought had been driven back to where they come from, are on the upswing in the northwest.

    Perhaps, the increased jostling amongst politicians for 2027 is the opportune time for the destabilization plots by these local and foreign criminal agents. So, we urge our armed forces to redouble their efforts to allay the fears that foreign forces working to bring Nigeria to her knees may succeed.  To further compound the challenges over our nation’s security, the economic difficulties associated with the federal government’s economic reforms have so pauperized many Nigerians that they can easily fall prey to misdiagnoses of the solution to our problems.

    For the avoidance of doubt, this column believes that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) administration’s economic policies would yield the desired result; but is that the case with the majority of Nigerians, under severe economic pressure? Even though we are already turning the bend, from the worst hyperinflation that came with the removal of fuel subsidy and the floating of naira, many Nigerians are still finding it difficult to eat one full meal, a day. So, while vigorously pursuing the economic reforms, governments across the three tiers, must rev up their poverty reduction programs.

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    The local government administration across the country that ought to gain a new lease of life with the judgment of the Supreme Court, which granted them financial autonomy, is still doddering. Yet, it is the local governments, through the town unions, cooperatives, guilds of artisans, traditional institutions and similar grassroots based organs, that are best suited to frontally attack poverty at its root. Any organ of the federal government, like the ministry of poverty alleviation, should work through local councils, instead of the bogus federal bureaucracy, that ennobles corruption.

    The first lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, is showing how to apply resources from the far-flung federal centre to alleviate poverty at the grassroots. While engaged in her Renewed Hope Initiative (RHI), she is relying on the wives of state governors, irrespective of their party affiliation, to drive that pet project. She is also attacking poverty in the health sector, by attacking specific health issues and others through small scale enterprises. If the wives of the state governors wish to have greater impact in poverty alleviation programs, they can also rely on spouses of local council chair persons, to cascade the impact further downward.

    This column urges the wives of state governors to initiate their own pet projects to alleviate the simmering poverty in the states. The local government administrations should also have poverty alleviation programs at the local councils. As a matter of priority, significant portion of the resources accruing from the removal of fuel subsidy, which has significantly stabilized state and local government’s finances, should be applied to reduce poverty in the country. The pretence by some governors and local government administrations that the challenge of economic hardship in the country should be the headache of the federal government is ridiculous. As I have argued here severally, they cannot enjoy the benefits accruing from the removal of fuel subsidy and leave the federal government to solve the poverty lurking in their backyards.  

    I guess most Nigerians would have noticed that many state governments have been engaged in infrastructure developments without borrowing, either from the capital market or the financial institutions. This is because the governors now have more monies accruing to their states, after the fuel subsidy was removed. The same is applicable to the local governments which enjoy more income than before. As I have argued, those at the helm of affairs, at the federal, state and local government should join forces, regardless of party affiliation, to tackle the crisis associated with gruelling poverty in the country.

    The other issue that the PBAT administration should confront frontally is the crises associated with farmer/herder clashes. This column wonders what the newly created ministry of livestock development is doing to help solve this problem. Nigerians had heaved a sigh of relief, after the ministry was created, to help solve the problem of herder/farmer clashes. Those who know the newly appointed minister, Idi Mukhtar Maiha, said the man is fit for the job, and yet five months after his appointment, he is not offering new insights on how that major national challenge for which he was appointed, can be solved. 

    While he is not expected to proffer solutions to solve the farmer/herder crises overnight, five months is enough for the nation to gain a glimpse of what he has in the bag or what he is cooking for the nation in that sector. As many commentators have severally canvassed, the itinerancy associated with cattle rearing in Nigeria by the Fulani, is outdated. Those who argue that traversing from outside Nigeria or within Nigeria, southwards, in search of pasture, is a peoples’ way of life which must endure, are responsible for the bloodbaths we witnessed in Plateau and Benue states, recently.

    It is bizarre that while there are political actors who readily defend the rights of the herdsmen to go wherever they want in search of pasture and water, we don’t see them own up and apologize when those they defend, use mayhem to push the agenda they promote. For emphasis, those who promote the right of herders to walk into any community with their cattle should be associated with the killings going on across the country in pursuit of that practice. It is deceitful for promoters of that practice to claim that those responsible for the killings associated with it come from outside the country. They know that the killings are the natural outcome of the rights of herders to graze without restrictions.

    Again, that misbegotten right to live in the forest as herders have resulted in kidnapping for ransom as business. Across the country, criminal minded herders, in some cases with local collaborators, have resorted to kidnapping for ransom, as a more lucrative business than herding. Some have turned kidnapping to the main hustle, while herding is a mere cover up. It is ridiculous that when state governments use legislation to combat the emerging challenge, political actors in the north speak up against such legislation, claiming that the business of their people will be affected. But when their people kill and burn communities, the actors are mum on the premise that the killers are unknown to them, and may have come from outside the country.

  • America: Age of the illegitimates

    America: Age of the illegitimates

    Donald J. Trump, America’s huff-and-puff, hot-and-cold president, probably knows pretty little outside his contrived MAGA tribe, and its culture of fashionable chaos.

    If he did, this Yoruba saying should have tweaked his cocky ears: harmony reigns in a home, only because the illegitimates in there have not come of age! 

    America’s illegitimates have not only come of age, they are gung-ho under Trump: thinking their home-brewed chaos is some new global high culture!  Witness: Trump’s irrational tariff world war, which not a few of them hail. 

    How deluded — and may their feverish delusion endure! What empire lasts forever?

    The biting irony with Trump begins with his wild deportations.  How can the grandson of a settler German, that emigrated to the United States in 1885, expel other settlers? 

    The family’s original German name, from their Kallstadt nativity, was Drumpf, which morphed to Trumpff and later still to Trump, among its many variants.  Trump sounds more English than German. Then, to boot: Donald’s mum was a Scot! 

    Pray, were Germans and Scots then native Indian-Americans, that the savage White tribe cancelled to take over America?  Did Germans even count among the Anglo originals that staged the famous Boston Tea Party of 1773, on the unimpeachable basis of no taxation sans representation?

    That rebellion by colonists from the British Isles, against own British Crown, would drive the American Revolution that eventually birthed the United States in 1776.

    But if a man, 78, shows little introspection in contemporary things, how can he — and his ilk — drink and be chastened by the well of history?  Which explains why there appears no rime or reason to the many Trump executive bumbling — sorry — orders!

    But there is another layer of piquant irony, in the happy lunacy of Trump’s America — Elon Musk: Trump’s fixer-in-chief to smash Uncle Sam’s federal bureaucracy.

    You’re well and truly ripped — even if comically — at a Dutch/Afrikaan-born of apartheid-era South Africa, with its holy orthodoxy of White supremacism, bob up with a load of cash as an “American”, preaching present-day White victim-hood in his native country, a former blind den of White oppression!

    South Africa has given short shrift to Musk’s White cry-baby campaign — and just as well!  In truth, beyond bullying propaganda, there is nothing there.

    But again, the irony ripples with old man Trump’s characteristically knee-jerk reflex, on his so-called Truth Social: “They are taking the land of white farmers, and then killing them and their families …” — presidential tears, dip, dip!  What crap!  Truth social, indeed!  More of fibs anti-social!

    Trump then pushed his presidential jeremiad into an executive invite: South African White farmers should relocate to America — the same guy shooing Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and sundry folks, off the United States!  Any further proof that MAGA is nothing more than make America White again (MAWA)? The irony is totally lost on him!

    But as they say here, in our pidgin high street, “las, las, America go dey alright”!  America will fix own demons!  Elections, after all, do have consequences!

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    The victims here though, are the many Africans in the diaspora. As they are finding out, fleeing own country to dodge developmental pangs, for “easy life” in “saner climes”, has limited value.  Hurricane Trump is living proof!

    Still, how Trump treats those who elected him is an American problem — no dog in that fight.  But extending his American bullying, to the rest of the globe, is a grave concern. It’s potent tinder for wild blazes, in this season of global harmattan.

    Trump clearly thinks China is an outpost of America, much the same as Canada: which he deems its 51st state; its prime minister, who he nettles as “governor”; Mexico, a contemptible footstool; and Greenland, an ogled pearl he must snatch from Denmark!

    Trump’s China explosion on X, tells the story, unfiltered:

    “Yesterday, China issued retaliatory tariffs of 34%, on top of their already record setting tariffs, non-monetary tariffs, illegal subsidization of companies, and massive long-term currency manipulation, despite my warning that any country that retaliates, above and beyond their already existing long-term tariff abuse of our nation, will be immediately met with new and substantially higher tariffs, over and above those initially set.

    “Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increase above their already long-term trading abuses by tomorrow, April 8th 2025, the United States will impose ADDITIONAL tariffs on China of 50%, effective April 9th.  Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! …”

    Insufferable, wasn’t that?  The global emperor had roared!  In another tweet, he moaned about how China “disrespects” the United States! But doesn’t respect beget respect?

    What China did — and admirably so — was confront the bully.  No matter what happens, Beijing had triumphed on that front — for Trump’s bully power is off. 

    As for respect, a bully doesn’t crave respect.  He thrives on fear.  But with the fear factor off, Trump lost his ace.  On tariff, it’s tit-for-tat.  We’ll see who blinks first!

    Tragically for Trump, the initial blinking — though in the dark! — appears from own corner.  First: exempting cell phones, computers and allied micro-chip products, where China and India hold the ace.  Then, freezing, for 90 days, the latest tariffs, earlier announced with aplomb!  So much for high-wire bluff and bluster!

    But it all goes back to old man Trump’s shallow core.  A more deliberative guy should have known that China — and others’ rise in Asia — resulted  from American capitalist greed.

    Voila! — they trumpeted globalization!  But that was a veil for cheap overseas labour, since they could no longer bear Americans’ high local wage bill. 

    Now, who will cover America’s flanks, from its president that knows little outside projecting raw power — as a minor showing off his latest audacious toy — and hankering after “deals”, no matter how obscene or soulless?

    Has anyone even told Trump that his tariff world war only cuts up the global trade order, hitherto infernally rigged to sate American capital greed?

    Or that his no-friend-no-foe tariff war only rips apart western cohesion — the most hegemonic tribe of this age that has imposed its ethos on other cultures? 

    Ironically, Trump’s hot labour should breed new trade alliances — and eventually throw overboard the bully, yet smiling, West?  About time!

    Trump swore to — open sesame! — end the Russia-Ukraine War.  But his peculiar magic is clear: reward the aggressor, bludgeon the victim!

    As for Israel versus Hamas in Gaza, all hail his El-dorado: an Arab riviera, built with US capital, but with native Gazans firmly shut out!  Sweet, isn’t that? 

    But since the Arab world wouldn’t  take that “deal”, from the ultimate deal-maker, war-hawk Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Nethanyahu, could continue his bombing spree — though Hamas’s hare-brained raid of Israel, on 7 October 2023, earns part-blame for that catastrophe.

    America’s illegitimates bay and roar to crash, in four years, alliances Uncle Sam had built over centuries!  To cash in, Nigeria must get its acts together!